RFID for Prosthetic Arm Control

We're interested in using EPC or other RFID data to inform prosthetic hand control. The more you know about an object and the context in which you want to control it, the easier it likely is to design a way for a user to interact with it. For example, armed with the information that an RFID tag might provide: "this is a 12 oz beverage can," or "this is a cordless drill," the user interface for interacting with the object can be reduced to a more manageable subset of choices: "grasp, release, do not crush, don't let slip," or "pull the trigger to operate, avoid stripping the screw, maintain grasp with non-trigger fingers." More specific information could be even more useful, or might be useful for people with different disabilities. The kind of beverage would be useful to a blind person. The location and operation of the reverse button would be useful to a prosthetic hand user.

The basic principle has been demonstrated at the Thakor Lab at Johns Hopkins using the Michelangelo hand from Otto Bock, which can perform two grasps, a key pinch and a palmar pinch. The video shows the hand responding to a series of objects with the palmar pinch, and finally to a set of car keys with a key pinch. There are plenty more examples, and we'd like to start a discussion here about how we might create a standard for providing the most useful set of aggregated augmented RFID information for these purposes. With a database and an API for interfacing it (and potentially hardware for implementing it as well), we could lat the groundwork for products to fill in the blanks to better serve people with a variety of disabilities.

A basic question is the best way to access basic existing descriptive RFID info, and potentially augment in such a way as to provide information useful to people with a variety of disabilities without paying a prohibitive amount for a subscription to the data, and distribute it to assistive technology devices without running afoul of anyone's business interests. There are a couple of open source RFID projects that may be useful: The Fosstrak (formerly Accada) project offers a set of open source tools for accessing EPCIS databases. Using some of these tools, the Penn RFID Center of Excellence has created a how to on setting up an open source EPCglobal Network. The RadioActive Project claimed to be planning a complete open source suite of RFID tools, but it looks like not much has happened in several years. Another is Rifidi.

Ideally, we would be able to create a database standard specific to assistive technology, including, for example, even xml geometry information for RFID tagged objects, and create an open repository of the information.

Are there any IP barriers to creating such a database?